A motor-vehicle door has an outer panel, an inner panel, and a frame. Normally the outer panel and frame are integrally secured together by spot welding to form a rigid shell. This shell carries the hinge, door latch, and window guides for the window pane that slides up and down in the door. The latch-operating mechanism and the window-raising mechanism are carried on an inner panel which is releasably secured on the inner side of the door assembly constituted by the outer panel and frame. Such an arrangement is described in German Patent Publication 2,240,858.
Normally the various mechanisms are all pre-assembled on the inner door panel which must then be mounted and properly aligned in position on the outer door assembly in the plant. Any adjustment of, for instance, the window guides or the door latch requires this inner panel to be pulled off.
An attempt has been made to overcome this in British Pat. No. 1,355,255 wherein the inner door panel and frame are united to form a shell assembly to which the outer door panel is releasably secured. This arrangement has the considerable disadvantage that prefabricating the inner door panel with the various mechanisms becomes a relatively difficult job as the entire inner door assembly must be fabricated at the same time. Thus whatever ease of adjustment or the like is gained with such as assembly is more than lost by the difficulty of making the complex inner door shell with its various built-in mechanisms.
Another disadvantage of the known type of door is that it is frequently relatively weak at the critical regions, as for example adjacent the hinges. Attempts have been made to overcome this as, for example, in German Patent Document 2,628,871 of F. Waldhauser. Here a heavy-duty reinforcement fitting is provided at the hinge so that the lighter-duty sheet metal elements forming the door are not overly stressed. The use of such extra reinforcement fittings not only represents an additional expense, but also slows down production by requiring yet another part to be assembled onto the door.